by Robin Byrd

When you are between writing, do you jot down phrases or words that stick out to you? Do you write down flashbacks of events or parts of your previous writing that seem to interject themselves into random moments?

I consciously stop to entertain the thoughts; to write the words and phrases down and even memorize them so I do not lose the essence before I get to write them down. I started a poem while rushing to a doctor’s appointment and had to memorize the first four lines and the feeling or creative zone I found myself in as the words came.

This is how my latest poems begin; there are a slew of them in my phone. I particularly like writing when I go to the Wild Carvery in Burbank to pick up my to-go orders. I park at the Mall and walk the two miles over to the restaurant, stopping on the sidewalk to type, and writing while I wait. It must be the atmosphere and / or the deep calm the walk puts me in.

Or perhaps the sensory memory.

When I was in my early twenties, I would walk to a Burger King to write because I did not have a space where I lived. These were letters I wrote which I have in a box somewhere. Letters that could now be consider fodder for a memoir – not the actual letter but the stage of life I was in mentally and emotionally. I used to have several notebooks of poetry journals or poetry diaries. I tore out a lot of the pages because rereading them caused me pain. I wish I had kept them and just not read them until later in life. When you are young you do not always think about memory keepers the way you do when you have lived a few more decades.

I like running into scribbles on a page that remind me of a whole “thing” and that thing ends up in a play or poem because its ripened fruit now. I like that my writing is less self-censored as I continue to work on writing fiercely.

I am thankful for fodder; it keeps the fire going…